The New Georgia Project was a voter registration and turnout organization founded by Stacey Abrams back in 2013. In theory it was a non-partisan group but in practice it was there to help Democrats win elections by bringing more Black and Latino voters to the polls. But now the group has announced that it will dissolve and will cease to operate this week.
Once one of the most influential political groups in the South, the New Georgia Project is shutting down this week, marking a stunning fall for an organization that pushed to advance Democratic causes for more than a decade.
The New Georgia Project’s board of directors said in a statement Thursday that the organization and an affiliated action fund are both dissolving but encouraged others to continue supporting “values of justice, integrity and equity” that guided their work.
In fact, the group has been limping along for months thanks to internal problems that led to mass resignations.
Signs of trouble have mounted for months. The group has long been hobbled by internal turmoil, fundraising struggles and mounting legal problems leading to an exodus of key staffers in the run-up to last year’s election…
The organization’s director, Francys Johnson, stepped down months ago amid mounting internal turmoil. And a Georgia Senate committee announced plans to investigate the group and its ties to Abrams.
In recent weeks, only a skeletal staff remained after at least three rounds of layoffs since the 2024 election.
In January the group was fined $300,000, the largest such fine in state history, for illegally supporting Abrams 2018 run for governor.
A voting rights group founded by Stacey Abrams will pay $300,000 for illegally supporting her 2018 gubernatorial campaign — the largest fine ever assessed for violating Georgia campaign finance laws.
Under a consent order approved by the State Ethics Commission on Wednesday, the New Georgia Project admitted it raised and spent millions of dollars to support Abrams’ unsuccessful campaign without registering as an independent political committee and disclosing its activities, as required by state law. It also supported the campaigns of other Democratic candidates that year, as well as the unsuccessful 2019 Gwinnett County MARTA referendum.
In all, the New Georgia Project and an affiliated group, the New Georgia Project Action Fund, admitted to 16 violations of state campaign finance laws.
The fact that these groups are closing now is not seen as great news for Democrats who are trying to win statewide offices next year.
Their closure, along with legal losses sustained by another Abrams-founded organization — Fair Fight — raise questions about whether Abrams’ model of voter organizing can be sustained. The groups are closing as Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff seeks reelection in 2026 and Democrats try to win a governor’s race in Georgia for the first time since 1998…
“For progressive politics, I haven’t seen anything yet that is going to replicate the amount of outreach, door knocks, conversations that New Georgia Project was able to achieve,” said Stephanie Jackson Ali, who was the organization’s policy director until she was laid off in July.
Not a good sign for Ossoff who is said to be walking a fine line in the current shutdown battle. So far he is sticking with is party.
On paper, Jon Ossoff has plenty of reasons to break party ranks as the government shutdown drags into a third week: The 38-year-old Georgian is the most vulnerable Senate Democrat up for re-election next year and his home state has more than 81,000 federal workers at risk for furloughs and firings
In reality, Ossoff is sticking closely to his party’s strategy of trying to reframe the shutdown fight as a battle over health care — and has emerged as an object lesson in the limits of Republican efforts to focus pressure on the Democrats’ soft spots…
Even though Ossoff represents a state that voted for President Donald Trump last year and his re-election race is ranked as a toss-up by leading campaign prognosticators, he has positioned himself in lockstep with his party’s leadership.
I think it’s probably true that few voters will be thinking about the shutdown by next November. That said, they may be thinking about Ossoff being in lockstep with the rest of his party. His party isn’t terribly popular right now.
Editor’s Note: The Schumer Shutdown is here. Rather than put the American people first, Chuck Schumer and the radical Democrats forced a government shutdown for healthcare for illegals. They own this.
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